This invention relates to a device for displaying fishing reels for greatest sales appeal with least risk of theft or damage.
Customers of self-service stores are generally given full opportunity to handle and examine displayed store merchandise without the attention of store personnel. This method of merchandising reduces the cost of sale and, therefore, reduces the price charged to customers. Since a typical self-service store is large in terms of floor space, enjoys dense customer traffic, and is not designed or staffed for close observation of customer activity, uncommonly high levels of shoplifting and damage of openly displayed merchandise tend to reduce or eliminate the cost advantage of self-service stores over full-service stores. This dilemma is particularly acute in the case of fishing reels because a prospective buyer expects to be able to spin the reel's crank, check its drag and brake, and otherwise handle and operate the reel to gain some sense of its quality, performance and manual feel. However, such relatively expensive display reels are easily damaged by rough handling and are sufficiently compact to be readily concealed and removed from the store premises by a shoplifter.
Heretofore, fishing reels have been displayed using various methods and apparatus none of which reduces the aforedescribed risks of damage and theft to acceptable levels. For example, the display of reels by placing them loosely together on counter tops or in bins subjects such reels to breakage due to being dropped or pushed from the counter and due to reel parts becoming entangled and thereafter damaged by careless customers. Furthermore, even when reels displayed in this manner are secured by safety cables or chains, they are easily stolen by cutting the safety device or detaching it from the reel or the counter with a simple tool.
To avoid damage and theft encountered when reels are loosely displayed, it has been proposed to secure several makes and models of reels to a pipe rack or frame by means of ordinary band-type pipe clamps which overlie the extending feet of the reel pedestal thereby securing them in clamped engagement with a pipe. In practice this display method is highly unsatisfactary due to difficulties encountered by customers attempting to operate the reel, the extreme ease of removal of reels from such clamps, the added risk of injury to customers coming in contact with protruding clamp components, and the crude appearance of the pipes and pipe clamps.
It has also been proposed to mount display reels on individual handle portions of fishing rods, or on an approximation of such handle portion, with the rod end of the handle portion fastened to and projecting from an upstanding panel or partition. Prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,378,882 and 4,560,071 suggest this approach; however, neither prior patent shows an effective means for thwarting theft of a reel from the handle since nothing more than conventional keeper rings or nuts are disclosed for securing the reel to the handle. If a reel were shomehow nonremovably attached to the handle of these prior devices, a determined thief could quite easily remove both handle and reel from a display panel by simply detaching the handle from the panel or by breaking off the handle.